


Aftermath

by tmariea (OccasionalArtist)



Series: Between the Lines [3]
Category: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: Angst, During Canon, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Spoilers, for the end of the iris gems quest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 17:12:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11673528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OccasionalArtist/pseuds/tmariea
Summary: What they learned at Lohgrin was a lot to take in.  It requires quiet a moment for Sorey and Mikleo to talk, and to work their way through their past.





	Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be for Sormik Week Day 5 - both for Lohgrin and Truth. But I fell behind, so very behind. Here it is, at any rate!

Dinner at Lohgrin was a silent affair, the night after learning the truth contained in the last Iris Gem, with barely a word exchanged aside from requests to pass this or that.  Nearly everyone had their own private grief to occupy them, besides Edna and Zaveid, but they had fallen into the subdued atmosphere just the same.  While Sorey hardly spoke, he did glance towards Mikleo several times throughout the meal.  After all, their sorrows were very much intertwined.

The whole of the day’s events had settled across his shoulders like a heavy weight, but by the sheen of Sorey’s eyes and the curve of his spine, it lay on him even heavier.  That hurt almost more than the rest.  Mikleo set his utensils down on the table, appetite dwindled to nothing, and announced, “I’m going for a walk outside the walls.”

“Will you be alright on your own?  There are still hellions around,” Lailah said.  Her voice sounded normal, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes.  The guilt of her past charge’s actions kept her turned away.  That would be something to address, too, but not right now.

“I should be fine.”

“Maybe I should go with,” Sorey suggested and stood, abandoning his food half-eaten.

Mikleo nodded and turned toward the doors of the tower.  Outside, there was little shade to protect from the scorching desert sun, but it would cool quickly enough once the last bits of sunlight slunk below the canyon walls.  He kept that in mind as he settled onto the warm stone of the steps; as uncomfortable as it was now, it would be nice later.

“I thought you wanted to go for a walk?”

A shake of his head this time.  “You looked like you wanted to get away.  To talk.”

“Oh,” Sorey said, and the dropped down to join him.  Mikleo did not miss the way he edged closer until their sides were pressed together.

“Where would you like to start?”

“It’s… it’s a lot.”

Mikleo waited for Sorey to speak, and when he didn’t right away, reached for his hand instead.  He squeezed gently, and Sorey squeezed back, hard, without letting up.  “Ow, Sorey.”

Sorey jumped just a bit as if he’d been startled out of his thoughts.  He immediately eased his grip and his face morphed into one of apology.  “I’m sorry,” he said, and brought Mikleo’s hand up to kiss the back before lowering it to cradle it in his lap.  He was silent for a moment more before saying, “We finally have an answer, and what we have to do.”

“Yes, we do.”

“Yeah.  And I feel like it’s the right one.  And I know Lailah said it would be far worse to let fear make me waver from my answer, and so I will not waver.  I do have the conviction, and…”

“Sorey,” Mikleo said, cutting off his rambling before it could get worse.  “We don’t hide anything from each other.  You don’t need to justify what you want to say.”

Sorey slumped and murmured towards their linked hands, “I’m still scared anyway.”

Mikleo certainly couldn’t deny that his stomach clenched some at the idea of firing himself into the heart of so much malevolence.  “Me too, a little bit,” he admitted, “but we’re strong enough for this.  I’m strong enough to do this for you.”

“I know, and I trust you.  But it’s one thing to say it to your brain, and another thing to tell it to your heart.”

“That’s true.  It’s okay to feel like that if you’re sure you won’t waver.”

“Thank you.”  Sorey fell silent again, this time occupying himself by rubbing small circles onto the back of Mikleo’s hand with his thumb.

The sun had finally slipped below the walls of the canyon.  Mikleo could let his eyes relax with a sigh of relief, and watch the pink and gold light creep across the undersides of the clouds as he waited once more.  He knew that this was only a piece of what was bothering Sorey, and he would get to the rest if given the chance to gather his thoughts.

“And then, Mayvin.”

Mikleo swallowed, and nodded.  He was truly unaccustomed, yet, to the nature of losing someone they knew.  Unaccustomed to burials, and gravestones.  They had been so lucky in Elysia, and so sheltered.  Aloud, he said, “Even though we didn’t know him all that well, he was a good man.”

“He was,” Sorey agreed.  “And even beyond that, in who he was and how he lived as an explorer, I saw something like a future for us in that.”

“Yeah, he did manage to do a lot of what we’ve dreamed of doing.  To me, it seems as if he lived a good life.”

“That’s true,” Sorey said with a nod.

“There’s something else bothering you, still, isn’t there?”  Usually, by the time Sorey got what he was upset about of his chest, or Mikleo pried it out of him, he would start to perk up at least a little bit.  But, he was still slumped and his face downcast.

His grip clenched around Mikleo’s hand once more, thankfully not hard enough to hurt this time, and his mouth was taught with emotion.  When he finally looked back up, his eyes were torn between holding Mikleo’s gaze with a kind of desperation and flicking away.  “You died,” he whispered, barely audible even in the silence of the desert.

Mikleo reached out a hand to cup Sorey’s cheek.  “Is that what this is all about?”

He nodded, and that seemed to signal the breaking of the floodgates.  His eyes filled and then spilled over with tears.  Mikleo flicked a few away with his thumb, and then shifted so he could pull Sorey into a hug.  Sorey’s arms came around his back as well, hands clinging to the back of his shirt and squeezing him just a bit too hard.

“Shh, it’s okay.  I’m here,” he said into Sorey’s ear, barely audible over the sound of his crying, but he didn’t think that mattered too much.  The best he could do for now was rub his hands up and down Sorey’s back, and murmur reassurances while he sobbed into his shoulder.

“You d-died,” he repeated.  “You were just a b-baby and you died and we had to w-watch.”

“I’m here now.  I’m alive, and healthy, and right here with you.”

Mikleo felt Sorey nod, but the tears didn’t stop, either.  He brought one hand up to stroke Sorey’s hair in time with the one still at his back, and began to rock them gently from side to side, the same way Myrna used to when they were small.  It was hard to breathe or swallow past the knot in his own throat.  He tilted his head up to look at the sky, now fading from blue into indigo, to blink away the wetness in his eyes.  It wouldn’t help if they both went to pieces.

As it was, Sorey was doing a good enough job of crying for the both of them, his sobs now falling into the kind of hiccoughing sound that said he was struggling to catch his breath but unable to stop.  The last time Mikleo could remember hearing Sorey cry like this was when he broke his leg falling down a trap in the ruins as kids, but even that was put to a quick halt by a strong healing arte.  There was no healing arte for this.  Only hoarse whispers of, “It’s okay, we’re okay,” in his ear, and kisses in his hair while he waited it out.

Eventually, Sorey’s crying slowed, and then petered out.  He tugged himself gently away from Mikleo’s hold and tried to sit on his own again.  Mikleo only caught a glimpse of reddened eyes, and wet, red cheeks, before Sorey swayed and whined, “Oh I feel dizzy.”

“What do you expect after crying for so long?  Honestly.  Come on, lie down.”  Even though Mikleo tried to hold some teasing in his voice, he didn’t feel like he did a great job of it.  But, he was far more focused on guiding Sorey’s head down so it was cushioned in his lap, at any rate.

Once he got him settled on his back, Mikleo opened the clasps on the Shepherd’s cloak and pulled apart the first few buttons on his shirt.  It was really only a symbol, but perhaps shedding some of the weight of responsibility would help him. 

Sorey looked back up at Mikleo with a sad smile and a few new tears collecting at the corners of his eyes, and reached up to touch his face.  “How are you doing?” he asked, in a voice that was scratchy and stuffy with crying.  “It was you, after all.”

“Mostly worried about you, actually,” Mikleo said, and started to run his hand through Sorey’s hair.  “I don’t remember any of it, of course.  It hardly even feels like it happened to me, almost as if it was someone else.”

“That’s good, I suppose.”  Sorey let his hand fall from Mikleo’s face and back to his chest.  He rolled onto his side, so that he could press his face into Mikleo’s stomach, and wrap his arms around his waist; the Shepherd’s cloak fell away from his shoulders and was left behind on the ground.  “But it’s still sad,” he said, muffled by his position.

Mikleo adjusted so that he could keep running his fingers through Sorey’s hair.  “It’s not the fate I would have chosen for myself, no.”

Sorey hummed his acknowledgement.  They were silent for a few moments more, while Sorey took up the occupation of gently scratching his nails up and down Mikleo’s lower back.  Finally, he asked, “Do you think that’s why?”

“Why what?”

“Why you’re a water seraph,” Sorey finished quietly, as if he was afraid to let the words have too much weight or sound.

Mikleo’s chest constricted.  He knew the kinds of images that would be going through Sorey’s head – of a tiny infant just stepping into his rebirth as a seraph and into a world of heat and flames and the scent of burning flesh, even if it wasn’t the fire that had killed him.  He still could hardly image that baby as himself, and he was glad his brain wasn’t pressing him to try.  “Maybe,” he acknowledged, because it was a logical hypothesis.  “I have always thought my element rather suited my nature, though.  But I guess there is no way to know for sure if my element was influenced by my nature, or my nature influenced by my element.”

Sorey shoulders seemed to relax with relief and he nodded with more vigor at the thought that his morbid idea wasn’t the only possibility.  “Yeah.  Okay.  Okay,” Sorey murmured, as if he was trying to reassure himself more than anything.

“You know, everything that happened brought us to where we are now.”

“We would have still known each other, though.  We could have been normal kids, with normal mothers.  I know I would have still fallen in love with you.”

Mikleo had to pause for a moment to tell his traitor cheeks that this was not an appropriate moment to be blushing.  It wasn’t as if Sorey could see, though.  “And I with you,” he reassured quietly, “but then we would have never met Gramps, or anyone from Elysia.  And, there was still a war, with Camlann as a strategic location.  Who’s to say we would have grown up normally?”

“That makes sense, I suppose.”  Sorey spoke slowly as he conceded, a combination of his mind still being elsewhere, and disliking to admit that Mikleo was winning, regardless of the situation.  “But then…”

“No, Sorey,” Mikleo cut him off.  “Saying ‘this might have happened, or that’ is just going to make you more upset.  Right now, I’m alive and here with you.  And starting to get cold, actually.  Do you think we could go back inside?”

He felt Sorey nod against his stomach, and he had to bite down on the urge to laugh at the ticklish feeling.  Instead, he helped him to sit up again, and then picked up the Shepherd’s cloak from where it lay, slightly crumpled, on the ground.  He folded it over one arm, rather than offering it back.

“You know, if you’re cold, you should wear the cloak,” Sorey suggested.

Mikleo could feel himself blushing again and looked away, even as he slung it around his shoulders.  He focused on his fingers doing up the clasps instead of looking to his side. 

As soon as they stood, though, arms wrapped him up and pulled him to a warm chest.  Mikleo held in a squeak of surprise, as Sorey kissed his cheek and said, “Thank you for bringing me out here to talk.”

“Of course.  If you don’t talk about these things, they just get worse.”  _And that’s the path to malevolence._   Neither of them said it, but they both understood.

“I love you, Mikleo,” Sorey said.  He squeezed him tight once, before letting go and taking his hand instead.  “Will you stay with me, tonight?”

“I think I can do that,” Mikleo said, as he turned them back towards the door into the tower.


End file.
